Author: Caroline Litwack
Graduation Year: 2006
Advisor: Jeffrey Peck
Reader: Michael Coventry
Date: 09 June 2006
Link to Thesis: carolinelitwack.pdf
Some of my favorite memories revolve around my Jewish-American identity. Spending the High Holidays with my family, eating strudel, kugel (noodle pudding) and tzimmes (carrot and sweet potato stew) singing Yiddish songs with my great-Grandma Bella, boasting that I had two names — one English and one Hebrew (Aviva Regn — Spring Rain) and spinning the dreidel on Chanukah with friends are cherished recollections. My Bat Mitzvah (ceremony where a 12 or 13-year-old becomes an adult in the Jewish community) was one of the most meaningful days of my life thus far.
Still, I must admit not all memories are so rosy. I disliked Hebrew School and kvetched about it relentlessly to my parents. On the High Holidays (2 days/year), temple services seemed never-ending. My grandfather and I would sneak out during service to browse at the local bookstore and return an hour later with guilty smiles. Also, looking at the ever-present herring at the Yom Kippur table makes me ill.
My experience was not that of a ‘typical’ Jewish kid … or so I thought. Being one of a small number of Jews in my white-picket-fence New England town, I never experienced playing at the JCC (Jewish Community Center), eating Shabbos (the Jewish Sabbath, a day of rest and spiritual enrichment) dinner Friday nights with neighbors, or shopping from the kosher butcher with his blood-stained apron, roly-poly frame and friendly demeanor. Maybe these were nostalgic images from bygone eras or maybe one had to grow up on New York’s Lower East Side to have such ethnic experiences. Or, perhaps even my own ideas stemmed from cultural images in films, television, theatre and literature. Growing up, such books as A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and The Diary of Anne Frank, movies and plays like Funny Girl, Fiddler on the Roof, School Ties, and Yentl, and such TV shows as Brooklyn Bridge or characters such as Paul Pfeiffer from The Wonder Years seemed to demonstrate what ‘being Jewish’ was all about. Whether real or imagined, my images of Jews, Judaism, and Jewishness did not mesh with my upbringing. Weekly pork-chop dinners, playing an ‘Angel’ in the school Christmas pageant and my soft blonde-hair simply did not fit.
Clearly, media images and stereotypes influenced my understanding of Jewish culture. Whether similar Jewish depictions endure today and influence other young, impressionable minds is yet to be determined. Whether these media images have any effect on Jewish identity or non-Jews’ perspective on Jews may never be resolved. Still, there is a need to explore these topics and add to the diverse and comprehensive research on Jewish representation in the media.